Google Brings Cross-Cloud Interconnect

Google announced a major expansion to their interconnected Cloud portfolio with the launch of Cross-Cloud Interconnect that lets users connect any public cloud with Google Cloud through a secure, high performance network. This would help enterprises run applications on multiple clouds, simply SaaS networking and migrate workloads across clouds. 

In a blog post, Google said “Cross-Cloud Interconnect is now generally available in many global locations for customers connected to the following cloud providers — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Alibaba Cloud — with support planned for additional cloud providers based on customer demand.” 

In the past, a multi-cloud deployment meant that enterprises ran different workloads on different clouds resulting in data silos and loss of operational efficiencies as these cloud instances weren’t interconnected. With Cross-Cloud Interconnect, users can directly connect Google Cloud with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. 

Set up a cloud network across cloud networks

Google’s innovation means now enterprises can set up high-bandwidth connections between public cloud platforms and Google Cloud. This allows them to run applications on multiple clouds. In addition, the company’s Private Secure Connect service allows users to have a private, isolated connection to Google cloud and the third-party services it is connected to. 

Enterprises continue to adopt hybrid and multi-cloud as they migrate and leverage the cloud to build and run their applications, the post said while quoting research by IDC that revealed 64% of customers were using multiple cloud providers for public cloud IaaS services and 79% indicated a need to simplify and unify how they manage and secure dedicated cloud infrastructure to improve business resiliency. 

Rise of distributed applications and its impact

We also made significant enhancements for Private Service Connect to support Cross-Cloud Interconnect, and automated service connection policies. In addition, we added new Cloud Interconnect capabilities, and released a new total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis showing lower costs of Google Cloud Networking, Google’s blog post said. 

Google says the rise of distributed applications have challenged cloud infrastructure as teams seek connectivity, performance, security and reliability. Connecting clouds require complex configurations, dedicated hardware and robust operational processes. Cross-Cloud Interconnect simplifies the configuration, minimizes hardware, and reduces overhead, it says. 

Available in 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps options, Cross-Cloud Interconnect does not require new hardware, has the same features as Cloud Interconnect, and is backed with a SLA. Customers with multi-cloud environments can leverage Cross-Cloud Interconnect to enable private and secure connectivity across clouds, line-rate performance and high reliability with 99.99% SLA and lower TCO without the complexity and cost of managing infrastructure. 

Digital transformation journeys simplified

“As enterprises, globally, look to adopt hybrid and multi-cloud network services – as part of their digital transformation journeys, they increasingly recognize the strategic value of cross-cloud interconnection capabilities as integral to their business success, says Vijay Bhagavath, VP for Research for Cloud and Datacenter Networking at IDC.  

A report on SDXCentral quotes Muninder Sambi, VP and GP of networking and security at Google Cloud to suggest that networking allows customers and organizations to move workloads into the cloud as well as modernize their applications. Google Cloud Platform has a large footprint spread across 35 regions. Even with that large deployment Google is well aware that organizations are increasingly adopting multi-cloud strategies, he said. 

According to Sambi, the Cross-Cloud Interconnect does not require any new customer hardware and can be provisioned by Google with bandwidth of 10 gigabits per second or 100 gigabits per second (Gbps). The interconnect with different providers is a tier one provider connection with the capability to provide logical networking overlays for workload management.